May Puer Tea Appreciation Club of Seattle Meeting!

Today was the month of May's monthly PTACOS meeting! We met at the awesome Phoenix Tea shop in Burien, WA and it was lots of fun! This also means I'm home for summer vacation now! Yay!

We tried a lot of extremely delicious Puerhs. Cinnabar wrote them all down, but I don't have the intention of making this a tea review blog, so I'm not going to go into great detail about that. There were a large number of us drinking today it seemed, and we had a whole bunch of great and crazy conversations that I'm sure we'll all burst out laughing about as we randomly remember the crazier tidbits later. I really love these kinds of get togethers and think that there should be more joys in life like this. While talking I learned about several different cultural and art events happening in the area, about other artists in the area, spas, and of course just a lot of interesting story telling about one thing or another. Delicious tea and interesting people and conversation, what more could one ask for? These meetings are the best and really make me want to be the Tea Hostess for my dorm again next year and have similar weekly meetings.

Then of course afterwards I finally did a bit of tea and teaware shopping that I'd been dying to do! Hehehe! I scored a GORGEOUS kyusu set from Kutani by someone named 栄峰 (not too sure yet how to pronounce this name). I'll put up a picture of it tomorrow. It's really lovely with pictures of camellias and ducks on it. As a set, it came with one cup with a lid. I am extremely happy to finally own a kyusu! Finally I can brew Japanese green tea in a Japanese pot instead of feeling sacrilegious by doing it in a Chinese one. Hahaha. And it's a larger pot, so I'll be able to do larger tea servings! Woo-hoo!

In addition to that I finally bought a nice puerh tea pick, a fine mesh strainer to pour through, and some very nice smelling rooibos chai tea. Like I mentioned before, pictures soon! I meant to get some purple tea too, but somehow I completely forgot!! Super sadness, but I'll just order it fresh in September if I don't manage to get over there again before leaving for school again.

Tomorrow the hunt is on for some possible cups, some possible green tea, and some possible fun things. WITH A FRIEND! Ahhh, exciting times!

Necessary Study Break Quick Comment (Library tea, Mother, Oolongssss!!, and the great Japanese Green Tea Shortage of 2012)

My mother thinks me caring so much about how to make tea is ridiculous. Hahahaha. I posted a status on facebook about how while they had good Sencha leaves at the coffee shop in Mount Holyoke's library (FREAKING AMAZING LIBRARY, by the way, except that it exceedingly reminds me of something you'd see in The Shining and is a horrendous maze for about the first 5 weeks...), but that they were going to put it into too hot of water before I requested ice to cool the water down (thought about just asking for hot tap water, but alas no matter how much I want it to be, sencha is not gyokuro), and then in addition to then almost ruining the whole point of putting in the ice they poured in the hot water directly on the tea leaves (which they put into a bag, but I forgive them for that) and didn't even bother to tell me how long to let it steep. *rambles and rants about why people mistakenly think green tea tastes horrible and bitter* But anyways, so my mother then comments something to the effect of "Whatever. Add water, let sit, drink." Hahahahaha.

Dearest Mother,

You are mistaking tea with instant coffee. Please note that not only are the two spelled differently, they come from different plants, are different parts of the plant, taste completely different, are biochemically almost completely different, and are definitely prepared completely different. Would you bake a salmon the same as a black berry pie? Never!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,
Your Adoring Daughter

Also, three amazing teas arrived from Phoenix Tea for me yesterday! They had a really cool opportunity that day at just the right time where I received not only my tea, but two awesome samples! I'll let you know what arrived tomorrow hopefully. I've been two busy today to try them, but I will let you know that I received two DELICIOUS smelling oolongs and one 2007 sheng pu-erh! But really, I've been starting to crave oolongs like the ones I ordered for a while now, so I'm super happy that I received two of them!

And as most of you may know, the Japanese tea picking season does not begin until next month.

...

NEXT MONTH.

Argh! Why did my Japanese green tea supply have to run out now??!!! Because now it's more economical for me to just wait than it is to buy some older stuff! But I'm so addicted to delicious Japanese green tea!!!! I suppose I should just save up my money in the meantime and splurge on more gyokuro. But I also really want some of the special green tea at the New Century Tea Gallery in Seattle, and I want some sencha this time too... Though maybe I should go for a fukamushi instead. Fukamushi was the first Japanese lose leaf green I ever purchased. Sadly, I had no idea how to make it or what made it special, so it was overwhelmingly wasted now that I look back on it. But maybe I should try it again now......... Too many choices!!!!! Also, the place I wanted to buy my new stocks of Japanese green are in South Hadley, and next month I will be in Seattle. Oh well. I'll stock up on the other smaller things I wanted while in Seattle and save a larger supply purchase from them in September so that I don't have to worry about shipping and hopefully they'll be better at storing than I have the ability to be. Haha.

I'm really a crazy tea fanatic. Hehehe. Loving it~~!

And now back to my work. I've put at least 8 hours into this now, and looking at examples from other classmates, I think I've put in too much effort already. Hahaha. Oh well. Hopefully that means this will turn out amazingly and my professor will be so impressed she'll finally stop giving me an exceedingly large number of +'s after my B's and finally give me an A on something. Seriously! How many +'s does it take to turn a B into an A??? Hahaha. But anyways. I know what I need to do, but without my green tea supply it's super difficult to do! Hahahahaha. Now! Homework!

Who am I kidding?

I don't know enough about aging pu-erh right now nor do I have enough money to go around amassing tea that I'm not going to drink. Hahahaha.

But either way, today I did something really funny. Haha. So yesterday I made spaghetti with friends. And with spaghetti comes marinara sauce! And with marinara sauce comes awesome glass jars with lids! Hahaha. And as every Northwesterner knows, mason jars make for great mugs! And today I have proven that they make great makeshift glass teapots too! Hahahahaha!

That's right! I made tea in a mason jar! Hahahaha! One of my filters for a tumbler fits perfectly in the opening of the jar, so I figured I might as well have fun and make tea in it too. Now I have a large teapot for my pu-erhs which I can't make too easily in my Breville! I love my Breville and all, but it doesn't really do less 30 second brews easily, so it's not the best for large tastings. I was thinking about getting a larger gaiwan (the one I have now is good for 4 people max and at that point your serving is super tiny), but I'm feeling protective of my wallet at the moment and would rather not spend even that much money, thus leaving me without a teapot bigger than 8oz! Until now! Hahaha! Now I technically have a 24oz teapot! Hahaha! I feel super hippie and college student-ish. It's lots of fun.

 Isn't it beautiful? Haha. That is also my new Mengku sheng in there too, just to let you know. And it was again a lot less spicy than I keep expecting it to be! Year 5 is definitely an interesting turning point for shengs I guess. Ah, I love this journey.

Oh and I found out something really cool the other day, apparently students can be instructors for classes during our intersession term in January! Hehehe. I was thinking of seeing if I could teach a henna class and a tea class. I know I'm not an expert on tea or a tea master, but I would absolutely love to be able to share my love of tea and what knowledge I have with more people so easily (and get paid! Haha). Plus then I'd have the funding and the excuse to buy more teaware and tea! Hehehe! But we'll see. I feel a little premature to start teaching other people about tea so seriously like that. So maybe I'll just stick with henna. What do you think? I was also really hoping to be in Japan for that winter break time period (we don't have to attend the intersession term), so maybe I won't do that this year... But again, we'll see. Hmm, I wonder if I could visit a tea farm when I'm there this time around! That would be so cool!

Speaking of Japanese tea, I'm considering learning Chado, because I really have a lot of respect for it and would also like to expand my Buddhist practice, but that's just an idea I have arbitrarily floating around right now, and I definitely don't have the time for that this year, and if all goes well and I get into the classes I need for next semester, I really won't have the time for the next 4 semesters either! Haha.

So I don't know if I've mentioned this on here before, but I want to be a biomedical researcher. I LOVE SCIENCE. You might have realized that by now. But really, I LOVE SCIENCE SO MUCH. Almost three years ago now I was extremely lucky and had the amazing opportunity to intern at a university hospital research center. Going in my intention was to explore the research side of medicine and confirm that I did not want to be a part of it. Haha! That's hilarious because I left with exactly the opposite mentality. I fell head over heels in love with research. I'm pretty sure I ended up working like 50 hours on average per week there instead of the required 40 because I stayed after almost every day and I even went in on weekends sometimes. I was extremely happy to get up every morning in order to go to work and didn't really want to leave at the end of the day either. Haha. It was just so exciting to go in and not know what you were going to find when the project was done. It was also really fascinating to learn hands on how cells and the chemicals in the body worked. Just thinking about it all makes me so happy and excited about it all over again! So I left knowing I wanted to be a researcher for certain.

To do this, I would preferably like the MD/PhD combo degree. If I can't get into that, then an MD, if not that then a PhD, and if I can't even get a PhD then I don't know how on earth I'm even alive. Hahaha. And it's not like I want just any MD/PhD degree either, I really want to get into one of the few NIH sponsored programs as well, because then it's F R E E. Woah! A 5 year doctoral degree, free!!! That would be a dream come true. So in order to even qualify to get in the first place, I obviously have to take care of some pre-med requirements. These requirements differ slightly from med school to med school unfortunately. I decided however, that Harvard's would likely be of a very high standard and am going off of theirs. I figure if I can achieve their standard, it will cover whatever requirements other med schools have as well.

I think I'm definitely right because they changed their requirements for the year I'd be entering (2016) this year, and basically added on an extra year of intensive physics classes and biology and chemistry classes. ...THANKS A LOT, HARVARD SHOWOFFS. Hahaha. Just kidding. I would've been taking most of those classes anyways, and they all look really interesting, so I'm sure it'll be fun.

So after figuring out which classes I'll therefore absolutely have to take I realized that I will qualify to basically be a Biochemistry major with a Physics minor. Hahahahaha. And not only that, but for the next two full years I will have to take at least one biology, chemistry, and physics class per semester. Technically I could put off one or another for a year and ease up the load a little, but I work better under a bit of stress and when I'm extremely interested in a subject. I feel that I definitely need to have a balance though, and so I'm trying to decide between Asian Studies, Economics, International Relations, or Buddhist Studies for my 2nd major or my minor. I'd rather do a double major instead of a minor (and I only need one music class to take care of my last distribution requirement because this year was so well rounded! Woot!) and I have like 13 class spaces that I could put whatever I want to in, more than enough for a 2nd major, so it's not like I won't have time for it.

But anyways, the future is certainly packed isn't it? Yup. And now I need to go do homework like usual. Hahaha. Time for more tea!